Fuel for the Game

Trademark fair use can win the race. SportFuel, Inc. sued PepsiCo, Inc. for trademark infringement. SportFuel alleged that PepsiCo’s slogan “Gatorade The Sports Fuel Company” infringed on its trademark. The attached image shows SportFuel’s use of its trademark on the left and PepsiCo’s use of its slogan on the right. The court granted summary judgment to PepsiCo on the basis of trademark fair use. The court cited factors that weighed in favor of fair use. First, the Gatorade house mark appeared more prominently than the tag line which lessens the possibility that the tag line would be seen as an indicator of source. Second, the judge found that the words “sports fuel” were merely descriptive.

WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS. Descriptive marks have a hard time getting trademark protection. An unprotectable descriptive mark uses identifiers that others in the same industry will need to describe their products or services. Some descriptive marks can achieve trademark status when they are more suggestive than descriptive or they’ve been used long enough for the public to connect the descriptive mark with the goods or services. This case was a close call. The words “sports” and “fuel” do not appear together in any dictionary. Fuel is often used with vitamins and supplements but more often it’s used with either food consumption or energy sources for machinery. So the combination of the words may be more suggestive of vitamin supplements than merely descriptive. There’s no word on whether SportFuel intends to appeal the summary judgment.